On Human Nature, 1979, winner of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
Biophilia, 1984,
The Ants, 1990, , 1991 Pulitzer Prize,(shared),
Naturalist, 1994, (memoirs).
Here, instead of a cute cat picture, is one almost as adorable, the author himself.
Whom we quote:
The account I will now give of ultimate cause of the bond between snake and man has been pieced together from accounts of animal and human behavior by many researchers....Fear of snakes is deep and primordial among the Old World primates, the phylogenetic group to which Homo sapiens belong. When vervets and...other long-tailed arboreal monkeys encounter certain kinds of snakes, they emit a unique chuttering call...[T]he response which appears to be inborn, is limited to the poisonous cobras, mambas and puff adders.. The response is not made to harmless snakes. Others of the monkey group come to the side of the caller and together they watch the intruder til it leaves the neighborhood. They are also ready with an inborn eagle call, causing all the troop members to scramble down from the trees and out of danger, and an inborn leopard call, triggering a rush in the opposite direction, to parts of the canopy the big cats cannot reach.....
Human beings also possess an innate aversion to snakes. ...
The neural pathways of snake aversion have not been explored....
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (1998), from which the above is excerpted, is a good example of Wilson's special intellect. Consilience, which stresses the orderliness of the universe, is a way of welcoming complexity, which welcoming is as rare in scientists as it is in policemen.
Biophilia, 1984,
The Ants, 1990, , 1991 Pulitzer Prize,(shared),
Naturalist, 1994, (memoirs).
Here, instead of a cute cat picture, is one almost as adorable, the author himself.
Whom we quote:
The account I will now give of ultimate cause of the bond between snake and man has been pieced together from accounts of animal and human behavior by many researchers....Fear of snakes is deep and primordial among the Old World primates, the phylogenetic group to which Homo sapiens belong. When vervets and...other long-tailed arboreal monkeys encounter certain kinds of snakes, they emit a unique chuttering call...[T]he response which appears to be inborn, is limited to the poisonous cobras, mambas and puff adders.. The response is not made to harmless snakes. Others of the monkey group come to the side of the caller and together they watch the intruder til it leaves the neighborhood. They are also ready with an inborn eagle call, causing all the troop members to scramble down from the trees and out of danger, and an inborn leopard call, triggering a rush in the opposite direction, to parts of the canopy the big cats cannot reach.....
Human beings also possess an innate aversion to snakes. ...
The neural pathways of snake aversion have not been explored....
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (1998), from which the above is excerpted, is a good example of Wilson's special intellect. Consilience, which stresses the orderliness of the universe, is a way of welcoming complexity, which welcoming is as rare in scientists as it is in policemen.
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